Wellbeing and reproductive freedoms: assessing progress, setting agendas

Wellbeing, Rights and Reproduction Research Paper II

Women in Development – Dissecting the Discourse

The concept of women’s development has now become an integral part of the development discourses and policy initiatives. This development has been informed by a remarkable though gradual shift in the perception about women, from the stature of victims and passive objects to that of independent agents. A significant impetus to raising such an informed platform came with the adoption of development issues within the UN system, in the background of increasing activism of development practitioners. The present paper critically traces the contours and its possible shades of this awakening that rises from the less ‘threatening’ planning for Women in Development (WID) to the more ‘confrontational’ gender planning with its aspiring goal of empowerment and emancipation. These movements have occasioned an increasing space for policy initiatives and interventions in favour of poor women in the Third World. There has been a gradual shift in orientation of these policy approaches towards women from ‘welfare’, to equity’ to anti-poverty’ to ‘efficiency’ and finally to ‘empowerment’. The policy reorientation reflects the changes in the basic economic approaches of the time, from modernization policies of accelerated growth, to basic needs strategies of growth with redistribution, to the recent so-called ‘compensatory measures’ for the neo-liberal illfare. The paper argues, inter alia, that the compensatory measures imply a substitution of the agency of civil society for that of the state in development process, the original agenda of the neo-liberalism.Women; Gender; Development; Equity; Empowerment

Growth and economic opportunities for women: literature review to inform the DFID-IDRC-Hewlett Foundation research program on women's economic empowerment, gender equality and growth in low income countries

This is a background paper for a new research programme on women's economic empowerment. It is a comprehensive literature review on the state of the field. Section 1 briefly discusses the global evidence on existing gender disparities in employment, wages, business opportunities, and the care economy. Sections 2, 3 and 4 describe the existing knowledge in the programme's central themes - constraints to women's economic empowerment, and the links between economic empowerment and growth - followed by research gaps and questions

Discrimination against Roma women in Romania. An intersectional perspective

open2noStill nowadays Roma communities in Romania experience social and spacial marginalization from the rest of the population. Numerous documents and reports underline how, as a consequence of the vicious cycle of poverty, discrimination and social exclusion in which they find themselves, they are in greater need of social protection. The article moves from the additional acknowledgment that Roma women’s voices and experiences of subordination and oppression are often overlooked. Too often the different overlapping discriminatory grounds are taken into account separately, without capturing the complexity of the identities and of the oppression they experience. While non identifying patriarchy as an issue having the power to define what Roma culture is, this work contributes to the analysis of the discrimination against Roma women in Romania from and intersectional perspective, taking into account the simultaneous action of ethnicitybased and gender-based discrimination. Moreover, this article demonstrates how intersectionality represents the most suitable analytical tool to tackle the specific situation of this group.Contributo di carattere interdisciplinare che approfondisce in chiave analitica le discriminazioni che investono le donne in Romania attravero una lettura intersezionale di questo fenomeno a cui corrispondone specifiche violazioni dei diritti umaniopenPaola Degani; Vittorio TavagnuttiDegani, Paola; Tavagnutti, Vittori

What's Missing? A Human Rights Approach to Reproductive Health Policies in Jordan

This aim of this thesis is to evaluate the extent to which Jordan’s National Reproductive Health/Family Planning Strategy 2013-2017 (NFPS) incorporates the reproductive rights principles established in the 1994 International Conference on Population and Development (ICPD). I trace the global history of family planning programs to identify the two main models: the population control framework and reproductive rights framework. Next, I examine the context and development of Jordan’s NFPS, before analyzing it through the lens of the reproductive rights based framework. I conduct an in-depth analysis of Jordan’s NFPS using the principles laid out in the ICPD, and a qualitative literature review to assess the impact of Jordan’s NFPS and related policies on women’s reproductive health and reproductive rights. Specifically, I evaluate whether or not the NFPS met the ICPD standards of high-quality, accessible, available and acceptable reproductive health services and whether it increases the ability of Jordanians to make full, free and informed decisions. My key finding is that the Jordanian government has pursued a single-minded goal of fertility limitation, without paying sufficient attention to the rights of family planning clients, who are in this case, its citizens. This narrow focus has led to potentially coercive policies and an ineffective family planning program that fails to meet the rights principles internationally agreed upon in the ICPD. I conclude by formulating recommendations and an action plan to promote the realization of women’s reproductive rights within the Jordanian culture and policy environment.Plan II Honors Progra

Climate and social studies services: Experiences from country engagements and lessons learned

A framework, created by a team of researchers at the International Food Policy Research Institute, supports the integrated analysis of climate change, gender, youth and nutrition

Yours, mine or ours? : a study of intra family income distribution : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Policy at Massey University, Albany Campus

Access accorded to family members to the resources of the household are an aspect of distribution which reflects the structure and values of a society. This thesis is an examination of the issues surrounding intra family income distribution. A significant aspect of this broad issue of distribution and the way in which it reflects inequalities in our society, is the use of statistical data on income and its distribution as a base for policy, without examination of the reality of access to economic resources for women. There are traditional assumptions of joint decision making by husbands and wives which influence policy decisions, and these assumptions need to be examined in the light of evidence from research, to determine the extent to which they can be justified. This thesis is based on three foundation studies conducted in Australia (Edwards, 1981), Britain (Pahl, 1989), and New Zealand (Easting and Fleming, 1994), about intra family income distribution, which challenge the traditional assumptions. A qualitative study was carried out for this thesis, employing a feminist perspective within a framework of critical social science and grounded theory, to investigate the systems of pooling of money in four New Zealand households. The thesis considers the findings of this study, and relates them to the three foundation studies conducted earlier in Australia, Britain and New Zealand. The thesis concludes with recommendations for policy and future research